Citation for "After the body displaces water", finalist in this year's Madrigal-Gonzales First Book Award

Daryll Delgado, After the Body Displaces Water (UST Publishing House, 2012): *** “In After the Body Displaces Water, Daryll Delgado draws upon both romantic and realistic traditions in fiction, the personal as well as the political, to deliver an outstanding debut collection. Here are tales of the post-EDSA uprising generation who navigate through the murky mire of lost certainties, failed expectations, of promise and compromise. Here, water, cleansing, life-giving yet dangerous, is prime element. Water is memory: malleable, mesmeric. It suggests the comfort of the womb and of early death, but must finally give way to the body, to present and authentic self. These stories offer up no easy answers only uneasy angles, uncanny ways of seeing as ‘through a glass darkly.’”

"After the body displaces water" Wins the National Book Award for Best Book of Short Fiction in English!

from the NBDB websites: "CIRILO F. BAUTISTA PRIZE FOR BEST BOOK OF SHORT FICTION IN ENGLISH After the Body Displaces Water, by Daryll Delgado, University of Santo Tomas Publishing House" http://www.nbdb.gov.ph/index.php?tid1=0 Related News: http://lifestyle.inquirer.net/133741/natl-book-awards-ust-publishing-house-named-publisher-of-the-year

"Reaching the World 2013" http://apwriters.org/reaching-the-world-2013-program/

Presented a paper on travel narratives and notions of self and home in the "Reaching the World" conference organized by Asia Pacific Writers Association (AP Writers) in Bangkok last October 4. Here's my member's bio, as it appears in the AP Writers website: Daryll Delgado’s book of stories, After the Body Displaces Water (2012), is a finalist in this year’s National Book Awards in the Philippines. Daryll has a BA in Journalism and MA in Comparative Literature from the University of the Philippines, where her Master’s thesis on fantasy as subversion received a special citation. She has also received a Philippines Free Press award for her fiction in 2010. She was a fellow in all the major writing workshops in the Philippines, and her short stories and essays have been published in various national publications and academic journals. She has been a lecturer at the University of the Philippines, the Ateneo de Manila University, and Miriam College. She currently works for an international labor and human rights NGO which requires her to regularly travel around Asia and to the USA.

Fiction as Allegiance

A paper I wrote sometime ago. http://www.thepoc.net/features/lintech/fiction-as-allegiance-an-allegation

"After the body..." is a National Book Awards finalist!

32nd National Book Awards finalists Announced The National Book Development Board (NBDB) and the Manila Critics Circle (MCC) are pleased to announce the finalists for this year’s National Book Awards. 32nd NATIONAL BOOK AWARDS FINALISTS For Books Published in 2012 Literary Division Juan C. Laya Prize for Best Novel in a Foreign Language 1. Agueda: A Ballad of Stone and Wind, by Anna Maria L. Harper, designed by Robbie Villegas (University of Santo Tomas Publishing House) 2. In My Mother’s House, by Joni Cham, designed by Lolita M. Calvo (Central Book Supply and De La Salle University) 3. La India, or Island of the Disappeared, by Rosario Cruz-Lucero, designed by Zenaida N. Ebalan (University of the Philippines Press) 4. Margosatubig: The Story of Salagunting, by Ramon L. Muzones, translated by Ma. Cecilia Locsin-Nava, designed by Karl Fredrick M. Castro (Ateneo de Manila University Press) 5. The Leprous Bishop, by Gabriel Miró, translated by Marlon James Sales, designed by Felix Mago Miguel (University of Santo Tomas Publishing House) Cirilo F. Bautista Prize for Short Fiction in the English Language 1. A Very Far Place: Tales of Tawi-Tawi, by H. Arlo Nimmo, designed by Karl Fredrick M. Castro (Ateneo de Manila University Press) 2. After the Body Displaces Water, by Daryll Delgado, designed by Adam David (University of Santo Tomas Publishing House)

A wonderful forum and book-signing with poet Lawrence Lacambra Ypil at UP Mindanao, Davao City, July 19, 2013. Photo by John Bengan.

A lovely passage about the book in an article by Sasha Martinez in the July 2013 issue of Esquire Philippines.

*** Three excellent books KRIPOTKIN By Alfred A. Yuson (The Philippine Star) | Updated March 18, 2013 - 12:00am *** Darryl (sic) Delgado has been so underrated among our contemporary fiction writers. I’m glad that she finally came up with her first collection of short stories last year: After the Body Displaces Water (UST Publishing House). In these 13 pieces (or are there only 11?), we are treated to a gamut of fictive forms — 1st-person, 2nd-person and 3rd-person points of view, omniscient, epistolary, meta, 3-in-1 variations like a choose-your-own Rashomon adventure… The writing is consummate: cerebral, controlled, carefully polished without calling attention to its carats, however we sense an objective correlative here, a pound of psychological flesh there, a template of a picture puzzle resolved to its last jigsaw, but barely so, just so. Form follows function, readability coevals imagination, with characters sliding not jumping out of boxes, and all situations unfolding with supreme sentience. The afterword by Rosario Cruz Lucero says it: “For each story, however, she doesn’t confine herself to the conventions of one subgenre; instead, she makes two or more of these subgenres fold into each other to create improbably neat works of fiction.” I like best the story “In Remission,” where a cancer patient of diminishing hopes, a 39-year-old virgin, spends time at a resort hotel and finds her senses awakened, to the smell of oysters, for one, and a drink called Deluge (antidote to her drought), until she is deflowered by a much younger chef. Sorry: no spoiler alert. Much more ambiguity happens, in her thoughts as well as in her own resolve that determines whether the jigsaw pieces fit. When she consults her doctor, she arrives at epiphany — that of her own awakened strength. It’s all splendid storytelling, with shifts in central consciousness jostling gently with environments of both dreamtime and hyper-reality. In “In Remission,” poignance pre-empts pathos, owing to such assiduous craft. The shy lady’s humor is said to be “of dry variety”; we hope her tumor goes the same way. Ultimately, the prose is exemplary: “He was fanning the grill, turning huge, stuffed squid over hot coals, and smiling most sweetly at the guests, many of whom were matrons dressed for the ballroom at the hotel’s basement. He looked up briefly and waved greasy tongs at her. She pretended not to see him, as seeing him had the immediate effect of fever and a general weakening on the vague area of her groin which, as it were, seemed as raw and tender as a freshly-scraped, open wound. An ugly gangrene.” From greasy tongs to gangrene, all the judicious elements of imagistic detail, motifs, tone, diction, and tropes of purpose hit the G-spot of narrative exultation. Brava! An international labor rights NGO careerist, Darryl Delgado should also be pressed into service soon as a creative writing workshop panelist. She can certainly teach young writers how to woman up with all the quiet bells and whistles.